Trump Indictment Accelerates America’s Race to the Bottom From the IRS scandal to the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, partisans on both sides tear down national norms. By Mark Penn and Andrew Stein
Mr. Penn was a pollster and adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, 1995-2008. He is chairman of the Harris Poll and CEO of Stagwell Inc. Mr. Stein, a Democrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94.
The demonization of political opponents is entering its next depressing but predictable phase—the use of the most partisan parts of the criminal-justice system to arrest and prosecute political opponents on flimsy charges. Too much of the public, increasingly divorced from bedrock national values, is cheering it on.
It’s the logical extension of Donald Trump’s claiming he won the election he lost; of Joe Biden’s branding “MAGA Republicans” a “clear and present danger” to “our democracy”; of right-wing groups planning and executing an assault on the Capitol; of the Russia-collusion hoax; of partisan impeachments; of tech companies censoring political and scientific information to promote ideological and partisan agendas; of retired intelligence officials interfering with the 2020 election by making false claims about the Hunter Biden laptop; of law students shouting down federal judges with the encouragement of university administrators.
The routine violation of political norms worsened under the Trump and Biden administrations but began under President Obama. He personally upbraided the Supreme Court in his 2010 State of the Union address, falsely characterizing its holdings in the Citizens United case. His administration weaponized the Internal Revenue Service against grass-roots conservative groups and initiated the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s interference in the 2016 election.
Most voters in last month’s Harvard CAPS/Harris poll endorsed indicting Mr. Trump—51% of all respondents and 80% of Democrats. When asked if such an indictment would be politically motivated, 59% said yes. When asked if any payments to Stormy Daniels were campaign or personal expenses, 67% said they were personal—the opposite of the theory in the New York indictment. Most expect Mr. Trump to be acquitted, which means some respondents’ answers violate the basic principle that prosecutors shouldn’t bring charges that they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
We are here because of an assault on American values, a heightening of partisanship, and an erosion of the two core constitutional principles—free speech and equal justice under the law—without which our democracy is truly in peril.
The assault on free speech is unprecedented and goes against the popular will. In one recent CAPS/Harris poll, 70% of respondents said they’d support new laws protecting free expression on social media. Yet college campuses and tech companies have put such rights at the mercy of bureaucrats, online mobs and even physical mobs.
Equal protection under the law is also under assault, as big-city prosecutors decline to pursue charges against serious criminals. The District of Columbia’s attorney general, for one, is freeing without prosecution a record 67% of those arrested. The largest criminal investigation in history isn’t to find those responsible for 100,000 deaths a year from fentanyl but to track down every single person who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, regardless of whether they committed any violence. The message: If you are on the political side of those in power, you get released; if you are a dissident, you get prosecuted.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has taken the next step with the indictment of Mr. Trump over a private transaction that had no real effect on anything. Who or what is exactly the victim? The business-record keeper of America? If the campaign had paid for it, Mr. Trump might have been subject to fines for using campaign funds for personal expenditures.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS to manufacture accusations against Mr. Trump and peddle them to the FBI—and her campaign covered up the expenditure as “legal expenses” in direct contravention of federal election laws requiring the clear disclosure of the ultimate beneficiary of such payments. After six years, the Federal Election Commission fined Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee $113,000 for these civil violations. Don’t expect any indictments to fly even though the dossier set off a pointless $32 million special-counsel investigation and tied up the country for years until it finally came out that the whole effort was from the Clinton campaign in the first place.
Time and time again, the abandonment of norms has come back to bite those who did it. In 2013 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid removed the filibuster for federal judges. That set off a chain of events that during the Trump years later allowed the Republicans to cement a far more conservative Supreme Court.
The damage from Mr. Bragg’s pursuit of Mr. Trump is done. The fundamental question is how we bring America back from the brink and restore the country to its values. One thing is unfortunately clear: Neither of the leading candidates for president, Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, can be counted on to do that. They are too caught up in the ends-justify-the-means battle that has led us to this point. Only leadership that is committed to reaching across the aisle can restore national unity.
emocrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94.
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